Localism Bill

Debate between Lord Borrie and Lord Taylor of Holbeach

Tuesday 19th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I think I can summarise it best by saying that they are two different orders of problems for local authorities. The reasoning for these proposals is obviously based on the London experience, which has provided local authorities in London with an effective way of dealing with the larger structure problems that one can have, where displays are put on unauthorised structures and their speedy removal is in the public interest.

[Lord Borrie]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Black of Brentwood, for his support for this amendment and for that of my noble friend Lord McKenzie of Luton on the opposition Front Bench. I am bound to say that I am a bit disappointed by the Minister's response, most especially when he said that in London, which is the route followed by the Bill itself, there have not been that many judicial review claims—I think he mentioned five. A great substance of my argument is that judicial review is a most unattractive route for anybody concerned about a decision against them by the local planning authority, because it is expensive and very challenging. It is not a real right of appeal.

The rest of the country has a real right of appeal. The anomaly that exists at present—recognised by the noble Lord, Lord Black, and by my noble friend Lord McKenzie—is not recognised by the government Front Bench. It is an anomaly to have a difference between London and outside London especially, in my submission, in the context of a Localism Bill. When the emphasis is on local government and local associations, it would be so much better and simpler to have a magistrates’ court appeal. The noble Lord has said that magistrates’ courts are very busy, but he will know that that partly arises because there are many closures of them by government decision. That is undoubtedly the case.

That decision may be supported on the basis of saving money, and in some towns and areas I would accept that there is an argument for saying, “The magistrates’ court here is not fully occupied, so it could be closed down”. However, the Minister’s point is that magistrates are already overloaded with work and cannot take on what would be very sensible new work, providing access to justice for those who feel that they needed to appeal against an unfair, unreasonable or difficult local planning authority decision. Of course, I withdraw my amendment at this stage but I think the Minister will realise that we are not happy with his decision, and I hope that he will rethink the matter in due course.

Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Borrie and Lord Taylor of Holbeach

Monday 28th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

My Lords, now we are on Amendment 25 and I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, will be pleased that we have an opportunity to debate it. I am much relieved, as my notes for Amendment 22 had long since disappeared.

Government Amendment 25 would add the Office of Fair Trading and the Competition Commission to Schedule 2 to the Bill, which, as noble Lords will remember, deals with mergers. The purpose of the amendment is to provide a vehicle through which to take forward a merger of these bodies, and it responds to a commitment made in our debate in Committee.

I should remind noble Lords that the Government are also minded to transfer most of the consumer enforcement functions and resources of the Office of Fair Trading to trading standards, and advice, information and education functions and resources to Citizens Advice. For that reason, the OFT will need to remain in Schedule 5 in order to facilitate the transfer of most of these functions prior to the expected order to merge. A number of points relating to the consumer landscape were raised by noble Lords in Committee and I am happy to answer questions that may occur in today’s debate.

In Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, asked for more detail about the Government’s proposed consultation. I can inform him that the Government published their proposals for consultation to merge the competition functions of the Office of Fair Trading and the Competition Commission and on other changes to the competition regime on 16 March. I do not know whether noble Lords have been able to obtain a copy, but it is a substantial document of 172 pages, covering the breadth of that particular aspect of government. The consultation will run for three months. The Government hope for as wide an engagement as possible, including holding seminars and specific meetings focused on specific issues. The Government intend to issue in May a further consultation document covering a model for the consumer landscape.

Growth matters now more than ever. Businesses—particularly SMEs—and consumers have been hit hard by the economic crisis. Reform is now important to create the right environment for business to create and enter new markets—reducing barriers to entry and encouraging rivalry between firms to promote lower prices and better quality products and services. There is longer-term potential for growth through benefits reaped from innovation that stems from greater competition in the market place.

Competition is the cornerstone of growth, innovation and consumer choice. The UK competition regime is regarded as one of the best in the world. But it can and should be even better. That means that we also need to have a strong regime to promote effective competition in markets. The Government believe that creating one, powerful Competition and Markets Authority would ensure a more dynamic and flexible use of competition tools and resource and a single advocate for competition in the UK and internationally and would end duplication for business.

The proposals in the consultation document include: creating a single, powerful advocate for competition to ensure a dynamic and flexible use of tools to promote strong and fair competition; increasing business confidence through faster decision-making, ending duplication and giving more predictability of competition processes and decisions; reducing barriers to entry by making it easier for the competition authority to tackle anti-competitive mergers and reforming anti-trust provisions to increase deterrence of anti-competitive and abusive behaviour; delivering faster results for consumers by shortening end-to-end studies and investigations into markets where lack of competition is giving consumers a raw deal; reducing the SME burden by introducing an exemption for small mergers from the merger control regime; and giving small business a voice in an extended super-complaints process to spotlight market features that harm small companies.

Those proposals are an excellent opportunity to strengthen and streamline the competition regime to deliver better outcomes for consumers and increase business confidence. The Government want to strengthen and improve the UK’s competition regime in order to promote growth, innovation and competition. The proposed merger of the OFT and the CC is about creating one, single competition authority that is dynamic and efficient and retains the best aspects of those bodies. The proposed transfer of the OFT’s consumer functions to organisations better placed to ensure enforcement against rogue traders and businesses and give consumers the advice that they need is important to ensure action can be taken at a local level. The Government are consulting on all these proposals. I beg to move.

[Lord Borrie]

It would be churlish of me not to welcome the 172-page document that has been issued. I have been one of those who has suggested that one common feature of the Public Bodies Bill is that whole lists of organisations covering every conceivable subject were inserted into schedules, in nearly all cases without any explanation as to why or how their functions would be replaced or where we were to go from here. It was a rushed job. Among the bodies listed when Schedule 7 existed—and I am glad that the Government have got rid of it—were the Office of Fair Trading and the Competition Commission.

The Minister said several months ago when we first touched on this, at Second Reading and in Committee, that the intention was to merge those two bodies. Then it became clear that they were not being abolished but somehow brought together. I say “somehow” because it is only now, or 10 days ago, that we have had the 172 pages of explanation. Delighted though I am to see that document, it still raises the issue of how the Government still want by this amendment to insert the Competition Commission and the Office of Fair Trading into the schedule when they have not yet had the outcome of the consultation. In other words, the Government still want to determine the future and merger of these two bodies before they have received the answers to the question that the consultation paper very fairly raises of what the advantages or disadvantages would be of a merger.

It is not appropriate in this debate to raise large numbers of issues about that very lengthy document, and I hope there will be other occasions on which to do so. However, in relation to the Office of Fair Trading, which is to become part of the Competition and Markets Authority, a number of provisions in the first eight or 10 sections of the Enterprise Act 2002 list a whole lot of functions for the Office of Fair Trading—to promote consumer interest, to educate and inform consumers and to have various other functions. The Minister might say that some of those functions will go to Citizens Advice and some will go to trading standards offices. That might be so. However, as a debate on this Bill and the loss of the National Consumer Council indicated, the Minister explained that Citizens Advice would be adequately resourced to be able to substitute for what the NCC now does. The suggestion in the consultation paper to which the Minister now refers indicates that the consumer functions of the OFT are to disappear, as are the consumer functions of the National Consumer Council. Am I right in thinking that that is the result of bringing together the competition functions of the OFT and the Competition Commission?

Furthermore, how are the new bodies to function? I am interested to find that the consultation document seems to further the idea that has been working well for 40 or 60 years of a two-stage investigation. The main first investigation, the prosecutorial investigation, was done by the first government department, and then the OFT when it came into existence. The second stage investigation was of a more quasi-judicial type, with experts from different parts of business and the professions brought together in panels to determine individual cases. That range of expertise to be drawn upon by the Competition Commission has generally been thought of, internationally, as a very helpful procedure. As far as I read it—I hope that this is broadly correct—it is intended that the panel system should continue but it is suggested that more people should be full-time rather than part-time. I have generally thought that the very part-time nature of the Competition Commission’s panel members is their plus point, because on every day of the week except for one, or perhaps two, they are in their own business, profession or work and bring that in to inform their work as members of the Competition Commission when investigating cases.

I then noticed that it is intended that the actual employees—the economists, lawyers and civil servants within the Competition Commission—are to operate as teams not just at one stage or at the second stage but right the way through. That might be because there is a conflict in the mind of the Government. It might be to do with wanting to save money, which you do if only one team operates on the same case throughout instead of moving from one to another. Yet it also makes it more difficult, surely, for the second stage to be truly independent of the investigation. To make a rather crude analogy, you have the work of the court getting mixed up with the work of the investigators and the police.

I have those various doubts and questions, but then I, like everyone else who has it, has only just received the consultation paper. I think the noble Lord said that we have two or three months to go through it and give our answers but why, here and now in March when the consultation paper has only just gone out, are we as the House of Lords being asked to determine in this Bill that there shall be a merger of these two bodies?

Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Borrie and Lord Taylor of Holbeach

Monday 29th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I am sure that the proceedings of this House will be widely studied. I am certain that the Government want to take note of all that is said in the debates on this Bill. But I return to my previous comment to the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, and hope that he will withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Borrie]

My Lords, in this debate there has been not a single person who has given support in any way to the Minister’s propositions. Not a single person in this debate, which has gone on for an hour and a quarter, has done other than sit on their hands or support the amendment, which I am glad I put forward. It is normal for someone in my position, who is summing up and is to determine whether there should be a vote or not, to give some mention of his supporters. I have been most fortunate because support has come from the experienced noble Lord, Lord Newton, a former chairman of the council, from the noble and learned Lords, Lord Lloyd of Berwick and Lord Howe of Aberavon, my noble and learned friend Lady Scotland, and from the noble Lord, Lord Pannick.

The second thing that someone in my position normally does is say what a good debate we have had. But we have not had a good debate because the only propositions on the other side were from the Minister, who I am bound to say, on the same lines as the noble Lord, Lord Newton, was a great disappointment. He stuck closely to the brief, which clearly had been prepared long before this debate began. There is nothing necessarily wrong in doing that in part; but, surely, after all the points that have been made in favour of this amendment from all sides of the House, there could have been some give—some notion that, instead of just saying, “This body has outlived its usefulness; all its work can now be done by civil servants in the Ministry of Justice”, something positive could be given. Nothing was given. My view is that we should go to a vote on this amendment and I appeal to noble Lords from all sides of the House to support the view that this body should be removed from the list of bodies to be abolished in Schedule 1.

Public Bodies: Reform

Debate between Lord Borrie and Lord Taylor of Holbeach

Thursday 14th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

The noble Lord makes some useful suggestions for the ongoing process of the review and I am grateful to him for them. They are not covered within the existing programme of change, but the Government intend to continue to test all government bodies against their standards. I note my noble friend’s comments and I am sure that I can take them back.

[Lord Borrie]

In light of the well-publicised speech during the summer by the right honourable Vince Cable on the disastrous situation that would come about if capitalism were to be completely unrestrained, is not the proposal to abolish the Competition Commission astonishing? It is true that the Statement says that it will be merged with the Office of Fair Trading, but over the past 50 years in which the present system for advancing competition has been in force, with the Office of Fair Trading, the Competition Commission formerly the Monopolies Commission and the Government, it has generally been accepted that the system is fair, just and effective. I mention fairness because the word is so important today. The Office of Fair Trading and the Competition Commission are separate and not merged together because the more aggressive body, the Office of Fair Trading, makes prosecutorial propositions against a merger of two companies, for example, and the Competition Commission can then judicially and impartially judge between them.

The Statement emphasises the matter of political impartiality. The reason for the whole set-up dealing with competition policy, to which all parties have adhered for 50 years, is that there should be political impartiality when it comes to individual decision-making about company mergers or the restrictive practices of a particular company. They should not be subject to party-political pressure. Surely, the Minister would agree.